Madi Mission: Kampala

I’ve logged well over a thousand kilometers in the Mary Mobile in the five intense days since I left Torit last Thursday. First I dropped the youth team in Nimule. At one point I couldn’t help smiling to myself as I thought how odd it was for a solo white boy from rural America like myself to be bumping and bouncing along through the African bush in a car full of jet black Sudanese youth singing hymns to Jesus and Mary in different tribal languages. It was mysteriously beautiful and comical at the same time. God has a sense of humor and is full of surprises.


The following day I met Dennis Kiyimba on the Uganda side of the border. We both experienced some unexpected delays, and so arrived at about the same time. Road trips in Africa are full of the unusual and unexpected, like meeting baboons on the road (above) and driving behind a motorcycle with passengers loaded with chickens (below; we also saw one hauling two tied goats). It took us almost eight hours from the border to reach the airport in Entebbe to pick up Maynor Ballesteros of Honduras, who had actually arrived in the morning. We stayed that night at the Diocese of Torit’s guest house in Kampala.


The next day we ran some errands and did some shopping for supplies, and ended up at Entebbe again, this time at 11:00 pm, to pick up the other members of the team coming from the US: Mario Dance, Josh Dart and Chris Josef. Due to a delayed flight and a lost piece of luggage, we didn’t get out of the airport till after 1:00 am.


The following morning, Sunday, we made a mini-pilgrimage to the Uganda Catholic Martyrs’ Shrine in Kampala, and to the Anglican Shrine down the road (where most of the martyrs from both churches were executed). The plan was for me to concelebrate and the others to participate in the 10:00 am Mass. When we arrived, however, I was asked to be the main celebrant and preach, to give the priest on duty a little break from one of the three Masses he was assigned to cover back to back that day. It was an immense privilege for me to offer the Holy Eucharist right above the spot where St. Charles Lwanga offered his life as a holocaust in witness to Christ. I offered that Mass for all the friends and benefactors of the CFR Sudan Mission. Our visit to the site of the martyrdom of the rest of the young men killed for their faith was equally inspiring.


We then loaded up the vehicle with the visitors’ luggage and the supplies we picked up in the city and headed north to stay with our friends at Emmaus Center in Katikamu, 50 km outside of Kampala. The following day, Monday, we arrived in Nimule (with a little push from the Virgin Mary to not run out of fuel in the long gas-station-less stretch before Gulu in the north) at 4 pm and met with the team in the evening to plan for the kick off of the parish mission the next day.



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